i just finished reading a TON of books.... all of which i'm going to write about... because i really adored them all.
first up... the great gatsby.
I’ve been meaning to read it for a long long time, but was never forced in school – I think with the stack of books that I have next to me at all times, it never brought itself upon me. So finally, after seeing that Bart Schaneman was reading it again – and raving about it, again, at that – I knew I needed to get it.
I fell in love. I fell in love with love, and the idea of tragedy in love. I fell in love with the 20s, and all that came along with them. mint juleps, extravagant parties, golfing and women basking in their own beauty.
Two of the other main characters – Tom and Daisy – were infuriating. I could provide my own explanation, but instead, fitzgerald summed it perfectly near the end of the story: ‘they were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made’. Perhaps part of the reason this novel continues to resonate with our culture, almost a century later, is due to the truth in their personas – and that these persons still weave in and out of all of our lives daily.
A few of my favourite quotes from the book….
‘he smiled understandingly – much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced – or seemed to face – the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favour. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.’
first up... the great gatsby.
I’ve been meaning to read it for a long long time, but was never forced in school – I think with the stack of books that I have next to me at all times, it never brought itself upon me. So finally, after seeing that Bart Schaneman was reading it again – and raving about it, again, at that – I knew I needed to get it.
I fell in love. I fell in love with love, and the idea of tragedy in love. I fell in love with the 20s, and all that came along with them. mint juleps, extravagant parties, golfing and women basking in their own beauty.
And I fell in love with f. scott fitzgerald’s writing. He’s a stunning man who used stunning language. He managed to make a book into a poem and a picture at the same time.
Gatsby is a beautifully theatrical character… and for him there is no other word to describe. He is posed as someone with a flair in everything he does – so much so, that as I read, I wondered if the ‘tragic end’ the Gatsby comes to (alluded to on the back cover of the book) was a result of his relationships with men. however, in the end, I felt as though he was an invention of himself – an illusion of his own making. His overall innocence, and purity was not expected, but lovely. heartbreaking even. he’s the perfect character to embody what the 20’s was – a decade of grandiose proportions, only to be toppled by the reality of what was going on in the real world, and America. Two of the other main characters – Tom and Daisy – were infuriating. I could provide my own explanation, but instead, fitzgerald summed it perfectly near the end of the story: ‘they were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made’. Perhaps part of the reason this novel continues to resonate with our culture, almost a century later, is due to the truth in their personas – and that these persons still weave in and out of all of our lives daily.
A few of my favourite quotes from the book….
‘he smiled understandingly – much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced – or seemed to face – the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favour. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.’
‘then it was something more. I wasn’t actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity. The bored haughty face that she turned to the world concealed something – most affections conceal something eventually, even though they don’t in the beginning.’
'the track curved and now it was going away from the sun, which, as it sank lower, seemed to spread itself in benediction over the vanishing city where she had drawn her breath. He stretched out his hand desperately as if to snatch only a wisp of air, to save a fragment of the sport that she had made lovely for him. Be it was all going by too fast now for his blurred eyes and he knew that he had lost that part of it, the freshest and the best, forever.’
‘a new world materials without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about… like that ashen, fantastic figure gliding towards him through the amorphous trees.’
read it. i implore you to bask in it's greatness. it's a wonderful story. and wonderful writing.
and if nothing else, leo will be in the movie coming out soon, with tobey macguire and carey mulligan. will. be. brilliant.